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This paper investigates the impact of family influence measured by the F-PEC scale on private enterprise (both family firms and lone founders) leadership succession strategy.

The research dataset is comprised of 390 private enterprises whose head offices were situated in the voivodeships of Lower Silesia and Wielkopolska in Poland. The authors collected data through CAPI (computer-assisted personal interviewing) method, as well as through comprehensive, structured interviews with company owners. Data were analysed using hierarchical logistic regression for each type of succession strategy.

The results suggest that increased family influence does not necessarily lead to intra-family leadership succession in private enterprises. Importantly, a range of findings contradicted authors' predictions. The relationship between the overall F-PEC scale values signifying the multi-faceted family influence over the business and the choice of internal successor was weakly negative for the total sample; also, the higher the overlap between family and business values and the higher the commitment to family business, as evidenced by the Culture subscale, the lower was the occurrence of intra-family successor choice in the population of lone founders. The Culture subscale also increased the prevalence of lack of succession planning in the sample of lone founders.

While several studies suggests that family firms may be more prone to choose an intra-family succession scenario, it remains unclear how lower levels of business and succession experience, may influence the successor choice. Indeed, some studies suggest that a strong family influence over a business, may stimulate family firms to choose a family outsider as a business leader. Therefore, the key contribution of this study is contextualizing the response to an ongoing succession debate. This study investigates the strategic choices of companies in the first generation of ownership operating in Poland, which serves as an example of a post-transition economy. While the characteristics of this economic environment may be unique, the authors discuss how the surprising findings may add to the understanding of the general succession processes present in private enterprises.

This article aims to investigate the most applied lean warehouse practices in Brazilian warehouses.

To perform this research, three phases were conducted: a literature review, a multiple case study, and an analysis of lean warehouses practices implementation by an engineering committee. Thus, both qualitative and quantitative approaches were used. Additionally, the study has an applied nature, with an exploratory and descriptive character.

Results showed that regardless of the type of criterion used, the most implanted practices are those that do not involve investments in technology. On the other hand, practices like RFID and Cross Docking systems were not found in any of the operations, which shows numerous possibilities for improvement.

The main contribution of this article is to initiate a debate about the management and productivity of Brazilian warehouses, a theme still little explored by the academic community despite the importance that the logistic scenario represents for Brazil as an emerging country and leader in Latin America, participating actively in several global supply chains.

This research investigates how to optimize storage location assignment to decrease the order picking time and the waiting time of orders in the staging area of low-temperature logistics centers, with the goal of reducing food loss caused by temperature abuse.

The authors applied ABC clustering to the products in a simulated database of historical orders modeled after the actual order pattern of a large cold logistics company; then, the authors mined the association rules and calculated the sales volume correlation indices of the ordered products. Finally, the authors generated three different simulated order databases to compare order picking time and waiting time of orders in the staging area under eight different storage location assignment strategies.

All the eight proposed storage location assignment strategies significantly improve the order picking time (by up to 8%) and the waiting time of orders in the staging area (by up to 22%) compared with random placement.

The results of this research are based on a case study and simulated data, which implies that, if the best performing strategies are applied to different environments, the extent of the improvements may vary. Additionally, the authors only considered specific settings in terms of order picker routing, zoning and batching: other settings may lead to different results.

A storage location assignment strategy that adopts dispersion and takes into consideration ABC clustering and shipping frequency provides the best performance in minimizing order picker's travel distance, order picking time, and waiting time of orders in the staging area. Other strategies may be a better fit if the company's objectives differ.

Previous research on optimal storage location assignment rarely considered item association rules based on sales volume correlation. This study combines such rules with several storage planning strategies, ABC clustering, and two warehouse layouts; then, it evaluates their performance compared to the random placement, to find which one minimizes the order picking time and the order waiting time in the staging area, with a 30-min time limit to preserve the integrity of the cold chain. Order picking under these conditions was rarely studied before, because they may be irrelevant when dealing with temperature-insensitive items but become critical in cold warehouses to prevent temperature abuse.

This paper explores the potential for family businesses (FBs) to play a pivotal role in advancing the United Nations (UN) Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). It seeks to elucidate how FBs' inherent strengths and values can be harnessed to integrate sustainable practices within their operational paradigms.

The authors employed a literature review to synthesize all the information and identify how FBs' desire to pass on a healthy company to future generations encourages sustainable practices.

FBs have the potential to contribute significantly to not only their own sustainability but also the broader well-being of society by aligning with the SDGs.

This paper provides practical insights for stakeholders, policymakers and business leaders seeking to foster a more inclusive and environmentally responsible economic landscape.

This paper aims to examine the relationship between the main decisions for designing distribution centers (DCs) and the contextual characteristics of the distribution networks.

Experts were surveyed and responses analyzed quantitatively through multivariate data techniques. This study considered four contextual characteristics that were deemed as influential for DC design: types of routes in the distribution network, quantity of DCs, distribution network levels and company size.

This paper evidenced which decisions are affected by each contextual characteristic encompassed in this study. This paper identified that the characteristic types of route in the distribution network must be carefully considered, as it had the greatest amount of associations with the decisions for designing a DC.

Despite its importance, most studies on design of DCs disregard the effect of the context in which DCs are inserted. This research provides arguments to support decision-making process of DCs design, increasing assertiveness of their planning. This work fulfills a literature gap by empirically examining the effect of contextual variables on the decisions related to DC design. Regarding practice, this paper addressed a fundamental issue for managers looking to design a DC, as it evidenced how contextual characteristics impact the decision-making.